Post #3859972

I'm really tired of the narrative that Rewind killed "the space that I loved so much". By the time rewind came into existence, the space they loved so much was already so far from alive. There was no group cohesion. No shared responsibility. No organisational structure. The punk gigs everyone knew us for were burning out the few of us that actually had any time or energy to put into the space, let alone improve it or offer any other kind of thing to the community. Not to bag on the history or the prior organisers of the space, I'm immensely inspired by and respectful of the history and impact of animal house and I wasn't there to say what it looked like in the pre-2021. But 2021 onwards, as a mixed use space and a community space, there were no structures, no community support and no plan for a long-term approach to sustaining our outputs. If I was going to continue to be there I needed it to be a group effort and that's what I fought for. I'll leave out arguing my validity as a punk but for many it seemed like my insistence that anarchy didn't mean we couldn't create structures for ourselves meant I was arguing for something other than what they bargained for. It felt like once people were being asked to take responsibility and work together to make the space safe, functional and sustainable, that's when people got a bad taste in their mouth. I'm in no way saying I went about arguing my case in the most understanding way either, but I did try to be. the rebrand was intentional to provide a conceptual bridge to say "we're doing things differently now" but it was never meant to be the end of gigs and parties in the space. Over the few years rewind has existed we've done so many awesome things and made existing in the space a lot cosier. Run dozens of events that I'm super proud of and will look back on for the rest of my life. 1/?